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Canadian Forces to enter new era with fresh faces at the top

HMCS Fredericton is on manoeuvres in Frobisher Bay at the southern tip of Canada's Baffin Island, taking part in a sovereignty exercise involving a Canadian submarine, Canadian Coast Guard vessel, fighter jets, as well as 800 soldiers. Photo: Michel Comte/AFP/Getty Images/Files

OTTAWA — National Defence will enter a new era of deep spending cuts, limited deployments and military procurement problems with new leadership after the Conservative government completed a dramatic overhaul at the top on Wednesday.

The vice-chief of defence staff and the heads of both the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Navy top the latest list of senior officers to be shuffled out as the government prepares to take the Canadian Forces in a different direction.

The government only replaced Walter Natynczyk with Gen. Tom Lawson as the country’s top soldier and installed a new Royal Canadian Air Force commander late last year, while a new civilian head of military procurement arrived on Jan. 2.

While many of the changes were expected, some of the senior officers replaced this time around were reportedly caught by surprise, reinforcing perceptions major changes are on the horizon.

“The inference to draw here by the number of changes and the number of people … indicates that this is a new era,” said Royal Military College professor Christian Leuprecht. “It’s positioning the Canadian Forces to be a post-Afghanistan Canadian Forces.”

The Defence Department is facing the largest reduction of all federal departments in terms of sheer numbers, at more than $1.1 billion by 2014-15 — though some experts have pegged the actual cuts by as much as $2.5 billion because of various other cost-cutting exercises.

The Conservative government’s initial plan to invest $490 billion in defence over the next 20 years is also being reviewed.

This has prompted a behind-the-scenes struggle that has occasionally broken into public view, notably in the form of repeated warnings from Prime Minister Stephen Harper last year that National Defence will be required to do its part to cut the federal deficit.

There had been indications some at the most senior levels of the military were pushing back against the government’s efforts to rein in spending, or only reluctantly implementing the prime minister’s call for “more teeth and less tail.”

Leuprecht said the changes in leadership don’t necessarily represent a “purge,” but they do indicate the government is putting in place people who will buy into its priorities when it comes to the Canadian Forces — and also make them happen.

That applies to military procurement as well, as the new senior officers will be expected to help push ahead major procurement projects that are just getting started — and clean up those that have gone off the rails.

This will involve working in an entirely new environment involving a range of new checks and balances implemented as a result of the F-35 stealth fighter program.

For Rear-Admiral Mark Norman, for example, this means replacing Vice-Admiral Paul Maddison as head of the navy just as the Conservative government’s vaunted $35-billion national shipbuilding strategy is about to become a hot political issue.

Not only are Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page and Auditor General Michael Ferguson preparing reports on the shipbuilding plan, but pressure is mounting to start cutting steel as the navy’s aging destroyers and supply ships near the end of their lives.

Jim Carruthers, national vice-president of the Naval Association of Canada, said given everything going on around the shipbuilding strategy, “this is probably a good time to make a change (in leadership) if you’re going to make it.”

All told, the government announced Wednesday that 12 of the Canadian Forces’ 114 most senior officers were being replaced.

The list includes Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson, who served as former chief of defence staff Walter Natynczyk’s right-hand man since July 2010, and Canadian Army commander Lt.-Gen. Peter Devlin are on the list.

Replacing Donaldson is Lt.-Gen. Guy Thibault, who has served since June 2011 as chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board, which facilitates military co-operation between countries throughout the western hemisphere, in some way like NATO.

Lt.-Gen. Marquis Hainse, who was serving as deputy commander to the NATO headquarters in Naples, Italy, is the new head of the army.
Lt.-Gen. Walter Semianiw, who oversaw all Canadian military missions inside Canada and North America, including the Caribbean, is also on the way out, the apparent casualty of a Defence Department restructuring that started last year.